re-write

I’ve completed the seventh re-write. Added page numbers and a watermark. PDF’d it and printed it out. It sits beside me wrapped in heavy brown paper. Shortly I have to write a cover letter to my teacher explaining about it and my journey creating it.

I’m have two very strong emotions flooding through me. Delight and despair..

I’m delighted because I’ve done it!! It feels awesome! I want to sing from the rooftops *grin* I get to read for three weeks now and not even think (HA!) about it.

But I despair that it’s not good enough. That I’ve missed some major mistake. That I see it through rose tinted glasses and it actually sucks. Friends reassure me it doesn’t and then I despair that they’re just ‘being nice’.

Who knew writing was such an emotionally taxing task? I didn’t. Not till I first began to type, April 19^th 2009 and fell into the intense adventures of Cat, Kassie, Loi and Sian.

*Breath* .. That’s all I have to do.

I’ll send if off today and then wait. Distract myself with reading and hopefully mastering Photoshop V 6 and getting my ‘thank you’ t-shirts (or bags or whatever my beta-readers want *grin*) done.

I’ve changed from listening to my intense ‘morning run/writing’ playlist to my ‘thinking’ playlist. And I feel sick. Ridiculous isn’t it? I should be used to it by now.

I guess it’s kind of like giving speeches. You get better at it but it’s never easier.

I am happy with the word count. It’s dropped from 117,000 to 113,000 and that’s with more information. Which means I cut a lot of fat.

No not another request for a partial – but I’m sure that’ll come along soon!

I’m re-writing the beginning of my story so it’s going to be totally different and after reviewing what I’ve written so far I’m very excited! This is much more likely to grip a reader and it still fits well with the story – much better than the original beginning.

Being able to re-write is such a vital step in the writing business but for a newbie like me it can be rather heartbreaking the first time. I spent a year putting the story to paper (hard drive actually ;p) and when I read about re-writes on blog sites I understood how some writers throw the towel in then and there. It’s quite demoralizing at first.

However once you’ve re-written a section or two, you then realize it’s not so scary. A huge sense of relief washes over you and if you’re like me you begin to relish the challenge of re-writing it till it sounds AWESOME!

Which I’m currently in the process of doing *grin* I might even post both 1st chapters once I’m done with the new version so you can see what I’m blabbing about.

It’s done

Exciting stuff